


The Consumption Incident

by Kest_Hammergarden



Category: World of Darkness - Fandom
Genre: Body Horror, Consumption, Ghosts and Spirits, Possession, The Consumption Incident, The Seattle Saga, Werewolves, college occult club, everything supernatural is kind of a jerk, semi-consentual possession, spiritual possession, the Uratha, the Uratha are simultaniously fantastic and terrible werewolves, then things happened, this wasn't meant to be anything like timely, tuberculosis, we started the campaign late last year or early this year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:35:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 17,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28404120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kest_Hammergarden/pseuds/Kest_Hammergarden
Summary: For Raven, joining the Seattle University occult club was supposed to be more or less an excuse to keep poking into what makes the spooky things work and to find some stories to send back home to her buddies. She can say with fair confidence that, despite not being great with tarot reading, the club president being possessed by a spirit wasn't in the cards. Trying to keep said spirit from eating every ghost they might find would be bad enough. Trying to save Vivian from her possession could be worse. Finding the club and a handful of what are almost certainly werewolves being the only things standing between the city and a return of a terrifying plague, well, if they survive it'll at least make for a good story.





	1. Chapter 1

Meeting 1

Alright nerds, I’m writing these out for you two so you’re stuck with notes on every meeting I go to regardless of if anything interesting actually happens. Not that I’m expecting much, yeah? I mean, it’s a school club, college or not. I figured, we’d probably wind up doing a bake sale or watching other people’s ghost hunting videos online or something. For notes, I’ll send these as the Seattle something or other, I’ll figure out the rest later.

Starting at the beginning. Got to the first meeting of Seattle University’s Occult Club. It looks like there’s a great crowd all things considered, maybe as many as two dozen or even thirty some people. But then the club president pops up, does introductions, and the club splits between the folks there for alternative religious studies and us there to research the paranormal. Counting me and the two club officials, there’s five of us.

So we have the club president, Vivi, she of the overly wide eyes and the insistence on how exciting it might be if we brought the creepy thing we ran into back with us. Apparently she feels all static-y around supernatural things or when she’s about to be possessed. She says at least. I would doubt it more if I hadn’t seen something happen to her, but that’s further on in the night.

Then we have Matthew Gill, club secretary, skeptic, and apparently the reason the club is split into two groups. You guys would like him I think. He wants proof that this all is real even as he thinks Vivi’s possessions are some kind of medical issue, which, fair enough.

And then it’s just the other two new folks, Skip and Louis. Skip’s a photographer, here looking for proof and also good places to take pictures. Louis is twitchy and terrified of the supernatural, but he’s also built a number of things for seeing and recording ghosts and what not. Like, dude built his own EMF reader. I think he wants to fight back against the things on the other side, which is respectable.

Let’s see. Introductions happened. Then we went on one of the touristy Seattle Underground tours.

That’s where things got weird.

Part way through Louis started panicking, like he’d seen something that just super set him off. Like if Ron saw one of those big garden spiders in his room or something. I’d tried the current version of the ghost sight spell I’ve been working on, not entirely sure it worked, but there did seem to be something like a person sized mist where he seemed to be looking. It was wavering, twitching around like something was trying to blow it away. Then it rushed at us, at Vivi and into her. She started screaming after that “It’s killing us all! It’s taken everything I had left! Save me! Save me!” Then she sneezed and it was like nothing had happened, but the misty thing was sucked up or something.

Louis shined his laser grid on where the ghost had been, I think he was just trying to keep line of sight on whatever it was. The grid revealed it as this billowing shadow thing. No real details to it, but it seemed like bad news so I got between Vivi and the thing and did what I could to throw up a ward. Something slammed through my ward and me and, I think, into Vivi.

We tried to play it off to the rest of the tour group like that was supposed to happen. I’m hoping that Louis managed to get a recording of it or Skip managed to get a picture. I know he got pictures of the bruises it left me with, so there’s that.

Then we went and got coffee and talked over what happened.

Look, I’m still sure this is my best bet to safely find out more about Seattle’s various supernatural things, but I’m also a little worried that with a group like this we’ll wind up stalled out before I can really dig into anything. I’m going to keep going to the weekly club meetings for the time being, just to see if anything happens. More next week then I guess.

Side thought, Skip got a thing at the coffee shop that he claims is just amazing. I’m ninety percent sure it is just a summer thing, but if you want to check it out I think it was called a frappachino?


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Viv is definitely possessed. The spirit calling itself "Consumption" pushes the club's members to help it break into buildings so that it might show them ghosts and then eat them.

Meeting 2

I have edited just so, so, so much profanity out of this so many times. You guys have no idea.

Vivian was acting super weird, even having just met her last week. Apparently she’s been quiet and withdrawn all week, not wanting to go anywhere and missing classes, enough so that Matt was worried about her when I talked to him mid week. She’s apparently mentioned something about feeling a weight hanging over her. He’s not much sure what to think about it, the whole skeptic thing has him grasping for any explanation other than the supernatural.

Of course, all of this goes back to Viv being weirdly closed off, but then she comes to the meeting looking dazed and distant, all “we have a plan” and “there’s no need to worry about protections” and carrying a bolt cutter like breaking into a building is something to follow someone you’ve known for three hours on. Especially when the entire “plan” seemed to be us following her to this deeply haunted bordello that’s been locked up for forty some years, and us just trusting that she knows where she’s going and what shape the place is in. The whole deal is a near complete turnaround from last week.

Not going to even pretend to lie, it was freaky. She was super focused in on this place having a lot of ghosts. So focused that she’d brought respirator masks for the lot of us and those huge bolt cutters, but had neglected to do any kind of planning session to bring the group up to speed on what she wanted to do.

Admittedly the super weirdness might be tied into “Consumption”. It wants the energy from the ghosts in that building, talks about needing them like a tv junky. Couldn’t get into the building before it found us for whatever reason, but apparently it figures no ghost can touch it so we would be safe with it. Can’t say I agree considering it was the thing that attacked us last week.

The wasting from within, it called itself.

Apparently it just neeeeded to possess Vivian so badly that my trying to protect her from it was tantamount to a threat and of course it attacked. This thing seriously sounds like a bratty kid. A bratty, self absorbed, deeply deeply selfish kid. It wants to absorb ghosts so that it can get bigger, get more energy. For that it needed to possess Viv as a vessel, something about needing a voice in the world to accomplish that.

It said that Viv is fine but, even once she was back in control, I don’t trust that. It feels like she’s too excited about it apparently knowing all about the old city and about how it’s been around here since there’s been people working the docks. She was two hundred percent behind its whole thing about my trying to ward it back being a threat to it. I got real mad about that.

Like, she says that spirits have always liked her and she doesn’t much mind them using her to reach their goals. Great, good. Doesn’t excuse her defending the thing that attacked us. Doesn’t excuse her trying to make getting attacked my fault for trying to defend us. Doesn’t make the idea that we need to keep it around and work with it so that it eats the ghosts we’re researching after we’ve gotten data on them rather than it following us around and eating the ghosts we’re researching anyway.

Ultimately we wound up going to the coffee shop and discussing more equipment, mostly an aura camera. I think I might be with Matt on that one, it would take a lot of testing to try and get good data out of one of those. Some idea juggling about sealing Consumption that devolved into telling Skip about Dragon Ball since he’d only heard of Z.

I might need to get a refresher on details from you guys. Or he might look it up himself. Either way.

Updates’ll probably just keep getting bundled with my meeting notes, easier to work out how the bits I come across fit with things that way I think.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Consumption draws the party away from the safety of campus to show them "something wonderful". Raven wants to fight it behind a 7-11.

Meeting 3

So, first things first, it has been a wild week. Between classes and stuff I’ve been digging into the difference between ghosts and spirits and if there is actually a difference. At first everything I found was either outer court Wicca stuff or things written by the million and a half occultists who want to be the next Ed or Lorrain Warren, all demons or shining angels of love and light. Not great that.

But then I started looking into exorcisms and sealing spirits away, that turned up good stuff. There’s this former priest who broke down how a Catholic exorcism works, why it works, and how it could be adopted by other faiths without losing effectiveness. Not sure why this guy seemed so sure that people would need the information, but I’m not complaining in the least. I’ll send you guys a link to it. It looks like the evil eye talisman Saul gave me should work effectively for me, since I trust that it’ll work to keep me safe.

Which is good, because I used the former priest’s work as a jumping block back into the difference between ghosts and spirits. Right? Turns out there definitely is one. Based on what I found, spirits are everywhere and they seem to be more neutral or even benevolent than not. Problem is, the kind of spirit that would charge through a ward like Consumption did seems to be in the not category there. Not really surprising there, but I mean, it’s confirmation that Consumption is, if not outright a threat, then definitely not our friend.

I also found documents in a strange language or code or something. Google didn’t want to translate it but there were enough terms defined with English words that it’s clear that it was talking about spirits. I saved a copy of it just in case I couldn’t find it again. I’ll attach that here, see if you can make anything of it. I’m going to pick away at it as I can, but who knows how far I’ll get.

On to meeting things though. Because oh boy, was this week a serious cluster of horrors.

It started off with a message on the group chat from Viv, all “the moon is right tonight” and “I’ll show everyone something wonderful” and “don’t trust, don’t come”. A lot of stampeding over the point that the spirit hasn’t done anything to prove its worth trusting. Setting the meeting off in a corner of the campus away from everything and everyone. And after that it didn’t even do anything there, it was just like “follow me to this creepy alley way away from campus, the veil is totally thin enough for me to show you all the thing there, this is totally not sketchy”, that’s me getting ahead of myself though.

I met with everyone except Viv at a coffee shop off campus to share the bits of information I’d found, including the bit where a guy at SU had done a paper on the brothel. Everything Viv/Consumption told us last week was in that. Matt said this is exactly like any other time Viv’s had an episode and what he’s said about her past, I find myself worried about how many times this has happened in the past. Following that, the likelihood that it’ll happen again once we’ve gotten Consumption expelled and sealed.

But yeah. We went to the meeting, staggering our arrival times so she wouldn’t suspect we’d met ahead of time. It was talking in plural, like Viv had any measure of control, assuring us that it was just a short bus ride and then a bit of a walk before it would show us this glorious thing. Talking about “Belishu” rat spirits and “Uratha” man or dog shaped spiritual jailers, how the veil wasn’t thin enough on campus to show us what it wanted to. Never giving a reason why we should trust it long enough to follow it to this supposed thin spot. Being a passive aggressive threat when called on that, claiming it wouldn’t do any of us harm and then, when called on that, specifying lasting harm.

Not going to lie, I’d have picked more than a bit of a fight over that if Skip hadn’t stopped me. I know Viv said that spirits don’t think like humans do, but this thing seems to go out of its way to push my buttons.

So we took the bus ride and the walk. Wound up over by a big waste ditch with standing water and what looked like places where homeless folks had been sleeping, but then abandoned. Some trees that Skip almost immediately started photographing. Just a nice normal place to get murdered by a wicked spirit possessing one of your friends, right?

But then Consumption started walking out into the water chanting. No language I recognize, but that doesn’t mean much. Then the sky split. There was this whirl of sepia before it and rats the size of your gran’s corgi, all of them chewing at the world. More than that, a figure, not like the billowing thing that initially possessed her but like a scarecrow puppeteer, floating above Viv and controlling her. A glimpse of what Consumption looks like now, I think. One of the rats got too close and it dispersed and absorbed it without breaking stride or stopping chanting. We tried to chase them out of Consumption’s range with salt, but it kept absorbing them.

So I threw my salt jar at Viv’s body. Hard as I could, hoping it would jar her enough to distract Consumption’s chanting. It worked but I hadn’t expected it to make her drop like her strings had been cut. It doesn’t seem like she’d been knocked out so much as knocked back into control. When I went to help her she seemed fine, just confused. She didn’t know where we were or how she got there. It seems very like Consumption can just do whatever it wants and Viv wouldn’t know better until she got hit with the consequences.

Speaking of, as soon as the sky tore open Matt started babbling about sewer gasses and the rats being reflections from under the water. It’s like having proof in front of him broke him so he had to reject it as hard as he could.

There wasn’t much after that. We all got back to campus and got cleaned up before going off to a diner to talk things over. Viv brought the schematics for an aura camera she’d been looking into last week. Louis seems to figure they’re pretty good. Viv seems to want this over with as much as the rest of us, though she doesn’t think that there’s a way to get rid of the spirit without just letting it run its course and use her until she’s not longer of any use to it. She did suggest talking to the leader of the alternative religion side of the Occult Club, Jimmy Tame, if I’m looking for a way to seal it away. So maybe she’s willing to try other options.

For now though, I have more research to do and homework to catch up on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An attempt is made to save Viv from her possession. It doesn't end well.

Meeting 4

So, I can’t remember but half or so of what happened last meeting.

I talked to Jimmy during the week. He seemed to think that an exorcism could work, so he got some of the folks from the alternative religion side of the club as well as some folks from the African Students Union to help out.

We got it all set up so that we’d be ready when Viv got there. You know? Talk to her, tell her what we were planning to do, get the spirit out of her. And if that didn’t work, restrain her long enough to do the exorcism and get the spirit out anyway.

She came in looking like eight miles of bad road, like she’d been sick for weeks. Insisting that she was fine, that she would be fine, that this really wasn’t necessary. We got her in the chair. Jimmy took lead, doing most of the work for the exorcism. Louis and another guy covered the door from outside. I had it from inside.

Something happened though. Like her body warped or something, making her all gaunt and stretched looking, and there was a blast of power centered on her. Jimmy dropped to his knees, vomiting blood. She charged the door, punching me in the head hard enough it sent me to the floor. Through the guy outside. Broke Louis’ ghost zapper. Then out the doors and into the city.

Someone called for an ambulance. The cops showed up. I think I rambled about superstitions and how human beings build stories based on histories and fears to an EMT while they took me to the hospital.

Everyone should be fine. I have a little bit of a concussion from the blow to the head, but that’s all. Jimmy’s stuck in the hospital for awhile though and everyone who was there has to be tested. It looks like Consumption somehow inflicted Jimmy with TB and a pretty advanced case of it at that. He’s stable though, and should recover. Campus will be closed for a couple weeks while everyone is in quarantine though. Got to make sure it doesn’t spread.

Apparently Skip told the cops that Viv had tweaked out or something and Matt took umbrage at the suggestion that she might have done drugs. He’s worried about how all this will affect Viv once this is all over, I think. It’s understandable. It’s understandable, but I don’t think any of us really realized how dangerous she could be while possessed. I don’t really think that Matt’s realized that yet.

Kind of a downer here, isn’t it? I’ll try to have something more positive to report next time. For now though, Note to both of you, I’m changing the header to these to “the Consumption Incident” because incident is no longer a placeholder word and things have gotten so, so much worse than expected. Hopefully I’ll be able to change it back soon and the rest of the year will just be standard ghost hunts.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Consumption having been confirmed to be the spirit of Tuberculosis, and having both inflicted the club's vice president with said tuberculosis and walked off with Viv's body, the remaining members of the occult club's supernatural research side dig in to try and find a way to save their friend.

Meeting 5

Two weeks of being quarantined and I think I might have gone a bit off if not for the web pages I’d found in that weird untranslatable language. There was nothing else to do besides research, so I eventually asked my linguistics prof. if she’d help me with what I thought was a code that I’d found. It took a few days for her to get back to me, but it was a lot of help, she figured out the sentence structure and picked out the parts of speech for a fair few of the words used there. I’m picking away at it a little at a time.

I did find out, while I waited on that, a big part of why my protective charms for everyone weren’t as effective as I would have liked. I used symbols that would have been effective for me rather than taking into account what would have worked for each of them. Working on fixing that now. I’ve got a Ghostbusters logo for Louis. One of those Darwin evolution fish for Matt, gonna see if I can weaponize his doubt here. Skip’s working on some kind of nested geometric pattern he figured he could use. Still trying to figure out what to do for Jimmy, but I want to make something for him. Something for Viv too, I guess I’ll have to wait on that one though. I hope it’s just waiting on that.

The upsides to working on translating these web pages, I’m pretty sure all this research means I could double major in anthropology and linguistics, but more immediately it also means that I turned up something about all spirits having something called a “ban” that can ward them off or even be used to seal them. That at least seems to be the gist of it. The flip side, of course, is that I also think I translated a bit about the Uratha having upwards of five different forms rather than just the two we already knew about. The more I find out about them the more they seem like some kid’s edgy original characters, many formed werewolves that police the veil between worlds and hunt spirits that dare cross over. I can only assume that they’re less that in the flesh, there’s got to be limits on how the number of forms works or something.

Of everyone involved in the attempted exorcism it looks like Jimmy’s the only one who was inflicted with TB, which suggests that Consumption can direct where it wants the infection to go. I mean, I’m assuming that it eventually wants the infection everywhere, but knowing that it can direct it like that should be important to trying to fight it, I think.

Either way, we met at the same time and place as usual for the club. Matt’s acting as the president for now. Louis had fixed up his ghostblaster after it got smashed and Skip had picked up a taser, so if we run into anything dangerous they’re at least armed. More importantly Louis found an absolute treasure trove of Victorian literature about tuberculosis and the “Spirit of Consumption” from back in the day, absolutely confirming that that’s what we’re dealing with, and Skip got the pictures he’d taken during the exorcism developed. They showed this massive shadow behind Viv, not quite shaped like her but decidedly attached to her. We’re learning more about it.

That meant a trip back to the drainage ditch to see if we could find a lead on the Uratha, sort of an enemy of my enemy deal. They’re our only lead on stopping it, so it seems like our best bet. Initially all, “all”, we found were dog tracks that turned into human tracks and then back again in the mud and a rough carving of a rat with three stars in front of it in a tree. There was a flash of fur in the undergrowth that might have been one of the Uratha or it might have just been a stray, but then a guy popped out from behind one of the trees with a knife longer than my forearm demanding we stay quiet because he was trying to sleep.

It turns out that foolishness gets worse if you’re in a group because we mostly ignored that and asked the guy about the carving and the Uratha. He didn’t want to talk unless we paid him and waved the knife a bit when we didn’t give him enough, which is a pretty big warning sign, but he put it away pretty quick once money was involved. He knew about what happened with the sky being torn open and that something really big had come out, called it a spirit of Avarice, said that it had attached itself to the new Amazon CEO who wants to make them a general retailer rather than specifically a bookstore. Said that it was at his left hand already, that something of that scale hadn’t shown up in ages and could change the shape of the city forever. We’re talking Rockefeller here, robber barons, bad all around.

The guy told us the Uratha would definitely want to know anything we had seen, that we should go to Pearly Oaks and ask to speak to Alpha Uratha. We aren’t supposed to bring anything silver with us.

This just keeps getting more and more complicated. We’re having a hard enough time with Consumption having possessed the club president, much less something bigger having possessed a big company’s CEO. Apparently the Uratha are having a hard time figuring out what to do with that themselves. It’s starting to feel like we’re taking a step forward and then three sideways, progress is happening and we have a next step but there’s always something else that’ll need to be dealt with, some new problem. At least we know where to go next though, right? We’ll figure this out eventually.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In search of answers, the club meets with the Uratha and begins trying to trace where Consumption is taking Viv.

Meeting 6

Fun fact, rats are terrifying in large groups.

That fact is not actually fun at all.

Backtracking though, it’s been a weird day. With Viv gone and Jimmy in the hospital we needed to wait a little while for Matt to get the other side of the club all set for their practices before we could leave for Pearly Oaks. I used the time to hand out the new protection charms. We picked up some cheep pizzas on the way there as a sort of peace offering since none of us knew what to expect of the Uratha.

All considered, it went fairly well. They checked us for silver and asked questions while one went to find their alpha. Turns out the thing that came out of the sky is more akin to a minor god of avarice instead of just, “just”, a spirit of it. They’re willing to help us with the Consumption problem, since it’s possessing Viv and it tore the hole in the sky open.

We did not get a ton of new information from them. The ban is definitely important to stopping a spirit. Consumption is definitely eating ghosts to get stronger, to gain their essence and add that to its own. The important bit was that a spirit will eventually fuse with the person it’s possessing, leaving them reliant on its essence to survive. Which means we’re on more than a bit of a time crunch if we want to save Viv, since we have no way of knowing how long it’ll take before Consumption fuses with her fully.

One of the Uratha, Brook, is going to be our contact for them, she’ll be helping us while we try to find Viv. She seems nice. Was willing to go along with it when we stopped by campus to gear up and then go check out the old brothel that Consumption had initially showed interest in. All that.

I would have emailed you about meeting with the Uratha then, but we didn’t really have time. Sorry about that bit being a little thin. I’ll try to stay on top of things better but rat man ghost kind of threw things out of whack.

The lock had been cut off of the doors. There were signs of someone having gone down the stairs, even having fallen on them. I’m a little worried that Viv may have a head injury assuming that it was her that fell. How’s that going to affect her?

Regardless, in the main room there was only one ghost that we could find. In the light of the laser grid it was just a blob pulling itself along the floor. Louis said that it looked like it was hurt. I can’t say that I saw that clearly, but I could believe it. There was a footprint, about Viv’s size, and a tunnel off to the side that must have been a hallway at some point. There was blood outside of it, no way to tell if it was human or not but of course I’m going to worry.

Brook mentioned hearing rats. They’re always in old buildings, Skip said. Not like this though, almost definitely not like this.

Skip lead the way down the tunnel. I’d like to say that he was just closer to it than I was but I couldn’t get the idea of a tunnel full of rats out of my head and so, yeah. Skip lead the way.

The tunnel was full of old needles, old needles and a spot of blood where someone hit their head before turning back. The rat man ghost and just so many rats were at the end of the tunnel.

When Louis caught him in the grid, he stood up and all the rats started chittering in time. Like they were chanting or something. When we tried talking to them they went full silent and attacked as a mass.

The ghost didn’t last long after attacking us. Louis’ ghost blaster is really effective there and the salt certainly didn’t help it. But we were all covered in rat bites from the knees down at minimum.

It looks like we’ve learned a few things with this though. I mean, not only that ghosts can control animals if they’re strong enough. But that Consumption either was worried about Viv’s safety enough to pull back from the tunnel full of needles rather than going after the clearly powerful rat man ghost. Or, more likely, that hypodermic needles are its ban or, better yet, its bane and we have something to fight it with. We’re even armed given how many of them we found.

There was some discussion of trying to find a way to tranquilize Viv, if we could get something from some of the party kids or something, but Matt does not like the idea. Safety issues and all. More research is called for, both on that and on trying to figure out where Consumption is going next.

I don’t think you guys are going to be terribly happy with what happens next. Let me know if you want me to keep sending these weekly or if you just want me to do one big report after we’ve beaten this thing.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With an Uratha contact ready and willing to help Skip, Raven, and Louis dig into their research to try and set a trap for Consumption.

Meeting 7

Right, just not talking about the danger doesn’t work for either of you. Got it. You guys are worried that I’ll get myself into something I can’t come back from.

Maybe have a seat or do some breathing exorcises before reading this one?

So, lot of research, same as ever. Skip and Louis worked on their weapons, something to get another charge out of the stun baton and a drive for the detector grid to store data for later going over. I think at least. I could really have asked better questions on that, but I was kind of burning up my own research.

Got a big copy of a map of the city from the library. Working from sites mentioned in local folklore and place that Brook, our Uratha contact, scoped out for us. Those give me a solid idea of which places had ghosts, which had spirits, and which were busts from the start. Between those and Brook reporting which places she’s been that were already hit, we figured out where it’s headed and that we can probably get ahead of it and trap it.

Like, Skip figured that it probably doesn’t have a base of operations. It doesn’t seem to be doubling back or staying in any one area long, and it’s moving fast. The more or less direct line it’s going in suggests that it’s just grabbing everything it can as fast as it can, which could tell us that it’s got a plan to put into place that it wants the power. Maybe it’s worried about the Uratha catching it.

I don’t think it plans on them catching it any time soon either way, so I lean towards it having a plan. I don’t think it’s counting on us being a threat to it, so that plays in our favor.

The fact that our current plan has us bringing the Uratha with us and making use of their exorcism ritual and greater experience should just tilt things more in our favor. They should be able to separate Consumption from Viv, assuming that the fusion hasn’t gone too far, leaving us able to attack it without hurting her.

Our general plan is to find a place in the line Consumption is traveling in to set our tap. A site with a powerful enough ghost to definitely be on its radar but also easy enough to lock down that it can’t make a break for it and double back or change directions and leave us having to track it down again. That would risk Viv way more than I think any of us are comfortable thinking about.

Side bar, my research turned up something called a Shadowblind Cloak that, if we can get our hands on one, should make ghosts and spirits less interested in Viv once we’ve gotten her free. I asked Brook about it, but she didn’t know anything about it. Though I’ve apparently been digging into things that concern her. I mean, I know that Google doesn’t like some of my research, especially the First Speak, but Brook’s reaction suggests that I might be getting further into things that regular mortals aren’t meant to know than is safe. But then none of this is safe, is it? Best not to think on that too much just yet.

Back on track though.

Skip, Louis, and I are going to go scout out the three likely locations we’ve found for setting our trap. While we do that, Matt and Brook will head back to Pearly Oaks and collect the Uratha who’ll be helping us. Once we’ve picked the location and let Matt know, we’ll get the trap set. Then it’ll just be a matter of getting everyone settled in and waiting for Consumption to kick the plan into action.

I think Skip’s excited to be looking into the locations we zeroed in on. He called it a job that seemed made for him.

All three are historic locations. The Underground Meat Marker has a new butcher shop built over it, so there’s no telling if we could even get in. It isn’t like Consumption hasn’t broken into places with proper doors and locks and all before, but it hasn’t really broken into a business yet. Might be too much trouble for it.

The Crumbling Pioneer House is a semi-active archaeological site, theoretically we should ask the city for access to it. But then that would take weeks that we don’t really have and most of what was there has already been taken to local museums. There’s a lot of reports of strange activities there, so definitely ghostly things happening. At least, Professor Croft had a lot of stories of things going weird when she was working there a few years back. She really doesn’t seem entirely the type to make things up just to pull her students’ legs.

The last is the Old Drugstore in the old down town. It’s near some museums and what not. Nothing really big in the area. Most of what I could find about it was reports of mysterious fires.

Full honesty, we’re heading out right after I send this, so try not to worry too much. Hopefully I’ll be able to update you on the situation in a day or so. Just, try not to worry for a little while.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a location picked and a trap set, the club attempts once more to save Viv from Consumption. With any luck, the Uratha will be enough help to tip the scales.

Meeting 8 (Meeting 7 follow up??)

We saved Viv!

Ish.

She has just, so much TB. Like, the folks at the hospital were amazed that she was alive much less that she’d been able to walk into the Old Drugstore. That badly infected.

Louis, Brook, and the Uratha Elder who was actually there to do the exorcism ritual were also all infected.

Louis and Viv’ll be in the hospital for at least the rest of the term. Skip, Matt, and I all had to be tested and are quarantined again. Some old law apparently. I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have. And the Uratha can apparently just sleep off their TB infections no big deal.

Which is cool but weird.

I want it noted that things didn’t start off this badly.

The Meat Market was a bust because the haunted part could only be accessed through the current business. So we moved on. It just didn’t seem like the kind of place we could both get into and do anything with. The Crumbling Pioneer House definitely had powerful ghostly activity but, of the three there, the only one actually in the house was super aggressive. It seemed more likely to go ahead and attack us itself instead of letting us set our trap and wait. The other two didn’t seem dangerous, but then they just seemed to be bratty kids.

Note, right, note that this doesn’t mean that the Drugstore ghost was harmless. Salt and iron do not block supernaturally created, I think it was at least, ether from spreading throughout the room. The ghost himself wasn’t aggressive at all, he was just working on whatever he’d been working on when he died, but also leaking horribly flammable gas. I would bet my last dollar that that was the cause of all those mysterious fires.

Note also, tasers and stun guns produce major sparks.

So, what I’m saying is that, after deciding that the Drugstore was our best bet for the trap. Setting everything up. And, in fact, managing to actually trap Consumption in with us with the needles and what not.

What I’m saying is that we set Viv on fire and then had to rush out of our own carefully set trap in this carefully chosen building so that we didn’t kill her before Consumption had the chance.

We mostly managed to pin her after that. Between the needles and the Uratha pinning her and the exorcism, Consumption was separated enough from Viv for Louis to blast it a couple times before. That was enough to make it separate and to chase it off, but it’s still out there.

It still could do this again.

I denied it out of hand at the time, but we got it out of Viv. She’s going to be fine eventually. Matt’s already doing everything he can to help her get things back to normal, calling her professors, canceling her classes, everything he can to help her and, maybe, make himself feel less like he failed her somehow. We could just let things go back to normal and leave it be.

Let the Uratha deal with whatever Consumption comes up with next and go back to being a normal college occult club. Stop having to worry about if this’ll get one of us killed.

It’ll probably be like that for awhile any way. I mean, people need to recover. There’s not much we can do with half a team. But it also feels wrong to even think about letting Consumption keep going with whatever it has planned.

Recovery first though.

Things’ll be quiet for a couple weeks probably. I can’t say that I won’t have anything to report to you guys, but it seems unlikely.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Viv saved and Consumption warded off for the time being the party seeks to recover and shore up their abilities to deal with ephemeral threats. Meanwhile, the infected Uratha brought trouble back home with them.

Not Even a Proper Meeting

Not sure how effective it’ll actually be, given that spirits are ephemera rather than solid, but I found a gym that offers boxing classes. If nothing else I feel a little better about if we ever have to fight a possessed person again.

And it fills the time.

Keeps my mind off the fact that we let a couple of heavily TB infected Uratha wonder back into Pearly Oaks where vulnerable humans live nice and crammed close together. Which I didn’t even think of after the fight and we would have never learned about if Skip and I hadn’t headed over to see if we could learn more from them. So many people getting sick while Brook and the elder had recovered completely.

Even more than Brook vibrating after drinking anything with caffeine in it or having seen their wolf forms running off after the fight, that really drives home how not human the Uratha are. Which adds an extra flavor of weird to Alpha Storm seeming interested in Viv’s health but not seeming to care at all what had happened to Louis. Not sure what’s going on there.

Brook asked if Louis was doing better. Maybe the others just seem odd by comparison to her since we interact with her more than the rest of them?

I suggested that maybe we should meet somewhere else where there was less of a risk of anyone getting infected but all anyone would say to that was that they were too busy keeping order at Pearly Oaks for anyone to leave. Didn’t seem too orderly to me, but who am I to say? Maybe Storm figures that with Consumption out of Viv it isn’t our business anymore. Maybe he figures that they don’t need us anymore. He’s wrong on either count but I’ve seen people be more stubborn over dumber things.

I’m not going to go risk getting infected to try and learn things they don’t want to teach me. I can always hit up the forums that I first found the First Speak in.

Which I have since then, of course, there’s an item that might help us keep tracking Consumption, the Judge’s Eye, it seems like it should be some kind of lens for scrying through. It’s smoked with an incense that I’m just not familiar with the ingredients for. Not sure if that’s a matter of it being common things with names that the Uratha use that just don’t translate well or if they’re something completely new that I’ve just never heard of. Google isn’t any help either way because of the First Speak. It also mentioned needing a “gift of essence” as part of its crafting and needing to be smoked in the incense beyond the Gauntlet. I’m assuming that the Gauntlet and the veil are the same thing, which might be dangerous, but the context seems to bear that out. Talking to Viv about it, “essence” is what Consumption called the stuff it took from ghosts. Might be some kind of needed sacrifice?

Both of those leave me with no clear idea of how to continue. I’m sure there’s a way to get the essence for this, but I’m not sure what it is or if it needs to be freely given to qualify as a “gift”. Likewise, for this thing to exist and have as much information available as it did, there has to be a way to cross the Gauntlet or veil or whatever you want to call it, do the ritual, and come back all while still alive.

When I talked to Jimmy about it he thought it might be more trouble than it’s worth, that maybe I should go back to working on that spell to see spirits. That would work for me, but only for me. The Eye should work for anyone who uses it.

At any rate, Jimmy’s running a class tonight with some of the other more experienced magic users in the alternate religion side of the club about warding and spiritual protections. He invited me to come help and I think that Skip and Matt are coming too. I might have more to add on that later.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learning of the outbreak at Pearly Oaks leaves the club's victory over Consumption feeling hollow, especially in light of its new ability to summon minor tuberculosis spirits to gather essence for it. The Uratha are, perhaps, not as good at their jobs as they would like the club to think.

Meeting 9(?)

Alright, Louis has been released from the hospital. He’s recovering in his dorm room some. Viv’ll be out soon. Anything I’ve heard suggest that her recovery is “almost supernaturally fast”, so she should be ready to be back to investigating soon.

In light of that, Skip, Matt, and I decided that it would be worth the risk to go back to Pearly Oaks and try talking to the Uratha again. Considering what we found I’m glad we went when we did.

Turns out that Brook and the Elder didn’t think to sequester themselves away from everyone else and all the normal slow healing humans got infected with tuberculosis. Which meant that someone sent the cops in to disburse the incredibly ill homeless people, leaving them to find someplace else to shelter rather than doing anything to actually help them. Because that’s going to help fix the spreading infection. Which meant that the Uratha had snuck away down an unkempt hiking path to hide from said cops and protect something like the tear in the sky from awhile back or fight some kind of minor consumption spirit that followed them in or was drawn to the sudden huge influx of sick people or something.

Good news, the werewolves are werewolves.

When we found them they were all just chilling in a clearing with a homemade henge set up. I think they put more effort into setting up the picnic tables and painting their symbols on them than they have protecting the city so far. They’d already packed to leave for another loci, the sky tears, when we got there. Alpha Storm really doesn’t like that I’ve learned as much as I have, “the hubris of Willworkers,” he said. He did seem pretty surprised that we still wanted to help fight Consumption now that we’ve got Viv back, that might have been funny if it weren’t for everything else.

More good news, the werewolves were somehow not naked when they shifted back to human shape.

But it looks like part of Consumption’s efforts to gather power while it was possessing Viv went to gathering the power to summon up a bunch of those minor consumption spirits that the Uratha blamed for all the sick people. Couldn’t possibly have been them, had to be the spirits. The minor consumption spirits are apparently not as powerful or aware as Consumption is and should really only serve to spread the disease faster and further, growing its legend and increasing its power. So we need to take them out before going after the big one.

Having them also means that Consumption can essentially generate essence on its own now, so it won’t be risking going out to eat ghosts. Which means that we can’t track it the way we have been so far.

That at least gave me an excuse to bring up the artifact I’d researched while we were stuck waiting for people to recover. “The Judge’s Eye”, some kind of smoked lens that allows a person to see spirits through it, but I wouldn’t have been able to make one myself because the herbs for smoking it are totally unfamiliar and the ritual itself has to be done on the other side of the Gauntlet.

I’m assuming that the Gauntlet and the veil are the same thing. I can’t exactly get across to the other side either way.

The Elder was willing to make one for us, since we’re going to help. Brook’ll drop it by once it’s finished, she’s going to continue being our main contact for the Uratha from here out. She’s planning on picking up a cell phone so we can more easily stay in touch.

It’ll take a week or so for them to get moved in and for the Eye to be made.

Meanwhile, we’re going to have to just leave the big Avarice spirit to fester. Here’s hoping that Amazon guy is more resistant to possession than Viv was? Not much we can do about it now either way.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Louis and the Uratha tracking the minor consumptions and no other direction to go in, the club decides to take down the minor spirits in hopes of weakening Consumption itself.

Meeting 10

Two things to note. These are totally not notes on a club meeting, there are currently no club meetings at Seattle University. These are notes about a group of students meeting up with a random stranger in a dorm room and deciding a course of action for dealing with a bunch of spirits.

My turn to pick up snacks. Viv made questionable smelling tea that apparently helps quite a bit with the left over pain from being possessed.

Normal Friday things.

Second thing, remind me not to work with art students if I can avoid it, right?

I figured that with there being a bunch more spirits we would need to deal with I should have a way to actually fight them. So I figured that I could put those boxing lessons to use, made a sigil to let me hit the spirits and found a guy who claimed to be just A plus at metal casting to make me a couple rings with the sigil on them.

It took almost the entire week to convince the guy not to “improve” my sigil designs.

At least it looks like Louis and the Uratha had better luck.

Louis found a bunch of places where outbreaks have been happening. Most all of them are places where disease could spread quickly anyway. From the looks of things the minor consumptions are mostly there to accelerate the spread of the disease, make it more aggressive. It’s some kind of path of least resistance thing though, they work best just accelerating the infection in places that it would already spread readily. So, not as many of the historic areas at least.

This whole new plague thing was, predictably, Consumption’s plan the whole time.

Viv learned a fair amount while possessed though, mostly the First Tongue that the spirits and the Uratha use, but also the location of an old medical clinic that it probably went to ground in while its power grows. There’s something like thirty, thirty-one of the minor consumptions, some of them might be guarding the old clinic. It didn’t expect us to find the Uratha, which just shows how little it thinks of people.

Tracking and or baiting them in might be something of a problem. It would be pretty suspicious for a bunch of college students to be wondering into a lot of these places. Even more so our specific bunch of college students who’ve already been in the hospital twice for Tuberculosis infections. Going in ourselves just risks getting us in too many kinds of trouble. Not to mention standard dangers, like getting infected or being on the wrong end of proactive home protection.

But we know where the minor consumptions are and can use the Judge’s Eye and take out as many minor consumptions as possible. The ones we can’t reach the Uratha will deal with.

Skip had a seriously good point about this all being weird. I mean, we’re going to have to adjust nearly our entire game plan to deal with free floating spirits. Louis can still fight them fine, the ghost blaster is a blaster. It’s still a reasonable tool for that. I have my new rings, but even when I was having those made I was hoping they’d be more a silly waste of effort than something I’d really need to use. Viv being able to cough up a bit of essence to bait spirits in feels like one of the more normal things we found out about tonight.

Speaking of, late getting this to you guys because we went ahead out to see if we could deal with a couple of the minor consumptions.

Good news, they’re way easier to actually deal with than Consumption itself was. They’re seriously creepy looking, like a horror movie’s idea of a leper, all dirty gauze and bandages and a weird fixed mask that crumbled into regular mundane dirt after we dealt with the spirits themselves. Weird stuff that, I collected it from both spirits for later testing. Here’s hoping that I’m not inadvertently stashing what’s technically biological weapons around campus with that.

That bait trick of Viv’s came in handy though, the first one was just in the middle of a park nice and easy to get at, the second one was haunting around a homeless camp though. We didn’t want to risk blasting it with all those people around. Got to say though it was kind of gross seeing her cough up, well just imagine that putty you could buy in the plastic eggs when we were kids but goopier and glowing in its own light.

It’s nice to be able to do something about this, however small the effect feels. I’m finding myself really glad that the coffee shop is open as late as it is.

Oh, and I finally remembered to get Viv’s protection amulet to her. She figures it’ll help. So that’s something at least.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The hunt is on as Skip refines the list of locations the party had to work from and Raven, Viv, and Brook, the Uratha contact, work together on a summoning spell so the club can deal with the minor consumptions on their terms.

Meeting 11

I’ve been working with Viv a lot this week on both a better way to draw in the minor consumptions than just using her essence trick to bait in everything. And also we’re both working on filling in each other’s knowledge of the First Speak, spirit language, thing. She speaks it better than she reads it and I read it much much better than I speak it. Brook was also willing to help with it, but I think that might have had something to do with Viv keeping her in as many energy drinks as she cares for.

Good news is, the summoning spell should work fine. The bad news is that it’s essentially magic by way of a big public art piece of theatrics and chanting. It’s only really useful if we’re able to set up away from anyone else, otherwise we’d draw too much attention. I’m sure there’s some way to smooth out some of the edges and get it less distracting to perform. I mean, we can’t really set it up as is in the middle of a hospital parking lot.

According to Brook the hospitals are already suspicious that this isn’t just a regular bout of Tuberculosis. They know it’s moving too fast to be normal. Which means there’s bound to be several spirits in the hospitals themselves.

A useable summoning spell will be super useful.

Also useful, Louis is working on making a few more grids so that we can tell where the spirits are better. Any of us can use the Judge’s Eye but it still is only really of use to one person at a time. Better to have three of us able to see the threats coming than just two, but better still if we all could see them so we could work together more efficiency. He also mentioned wanting to find a way to make the ghost blaster smaller so it would be easier to get into places without being noticed.

Thanks to Skip we have a whole list of places to check for the minor consumptions. The hospitals, of course, the boardwalk, the malls, various housing projects, tourist traps. He’s been keeping in mind that these things are opportunists from the start. More people means a greater chance of there being one or more of these things.

We’ll need a way into a lot of these places. A way in and an excuse for why we’re there.

Good news, the Uratha can help with a lot of the places that we couldn’t reasonably go. They can also split up and deal with the spirits a little more efficiently than we can.

Bad news, there’s still a fair number of places that we can’t just set a bunch of werewolves loose in and call it a win.

I doubt that the malls would be on board with that.

It should at least be reasonably easy to get the ghost blaster into the local con in a few weeks. We might have all wound up distracted for awhile by that, bit of lightness in the middle of all this. If there’s anything you want me to keep an eye out for let me know. It can’t take the whole weekend to track down the spirits and deal with them.

The plan right now is to call up the malls and see if they’ll let us in after hours. Use the idea that we’re the college’s occult club to the fullest extent we can. Have Skip grab a camera, do the paranormal investigation thing as a way to get in, deal with the spirits and get out. It’ll take a little time, but it’ll hopefully speed things up a little.

Tonight though, we went to the boardwalk. It seemed like the best place to test the summoning spell, reasonably safe, all that. And it was, there were more people than we expected, some local high school seniors having a party and some people sleeping rough. Nothing too bad. One guy came up while we were getting set up, invited us to party with them, expressed curiosity about what we were doing and if we could get them more booze.

The spell worked. A little better than expected honestly, it pulled two of the minor consumptions in.

And I might have knee jerk punched one of them. Louis zapped them. And that was that.

We partied with the high schoolers for a bit, I found out about a place that sounds like the occult coffee shop in town. Drank cheep liquor. Good times?


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reconnaissance trip reveals strange things about the new mall. While the old mall happily works with a bunch of college kids looking for ghosts.

Meeting 12

So we have an in with one of the malls, they were willing to let us in after hours as long as a security guard is keeping an eye on us while we’re there.

The newer mall though, whoever Viv talked to for the new mall laughed at her and hung up almost immediately. I was talked out of writing a letter to the mall’s owner and we just decided to head over with the Judge’s Eye and have a look around.

It was weirdly dead. Plenty of people but almost no spirits. Like, no minor consumptions obviously, but also nothing like the pond spirit from the park or the weird bird man that was haunting around the partiers when they headed away for privacy under the boardwalk. No left over spirits from whatever was there before. I mean, except for this one store that had the standard blend of new age stuff from incense to candles to those salt lamps and free trade clothing. That one had some spirits in it and just generally felt more alive than the rest of the mall.

More importantly, some of the magic circle things had actually solid magic bits to them. First Speak symbols among the nonsense.

Everything that was touched with realness was by the same company and about twice as much as anything else there. If you get the chance to look into them, the company name was Theosophia. I’m not sure if they’re actually local or just listed as being based here in Washington, I’ll let you know if I find something out before you do. Something other than their catalogue anyway.

Stumbling across this kind of thing, especially with the First Speak on it, makes me wonder if they found it the same way I did and how far spread the knowledge is.

The old mall was pretty standard all told. Lots of spirits. Like tons of them. It just made the newer mall look even more sterile.

The security guard was mostly there to make sure we didn’t just run around breaking things. Aside from a story about some activity in his cousin’s house he mostly sat back and let us do our thing while he finished his lunch.

The minor consumptions were both really easy to sweep up. Then back to campus.

I’m thinking that we’re getting better at this.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skip starts making contacts that get the club all the data they can work with. Raven smooths out the summoning spell. And Consumption is on the move.

Meeting 13

Looks like Theosophia has just about no online presence. I found their address and wrote them, but even as proud of the letter as I was I’m not sure that it will accomplish anything.

Good news though, after the mall runs I put some work into getting the summoning ritual more streamlined. It means putting the effort in upfront, but I can pre-prepare the candles and that brings me down to just needing to draw out the chalk circles and do the chanting. It’s not perfect by any means, but it is a definite improvement.

Bigger than that by about a million points, Skip’s gotten in not only with the student government but also with the Health Department. Which means that he’s gotten access to way more information about how this is spreading and has acquired a number of what should be really useful contacts. Got a hold of all their data.

He’s passed the data on to Viv, so she’s been going over that.

The Uratha have also been doing their fair share of digging, pardon the pun. It looks like Consumption has moved from that initial old clinic and settled beneath the basement of Seattle General Hospital, in the remains of the old hospital beneath the modern one. The old crematorium.

Someplace we really can’t get to one way or the other.

Which means that summoning looks like our best bet. Plus, summoning it would let us pull the same thing we did last time and then some. Choose our own location, trap it thoroughly, bend everything to our benefit. Wiping out the minor consumptions should render it vulnerable enough to hurt.

Not harmless mind, just capable of being hurt.

Added note to that, I finally remembered to ask Brook about the masks. They’re apparently just a connection to the material world. Essentially they allow the minor consumptions to exist in places where Tuberculosis wasn’t already present without them discorporating on their own.

Which brings up questions about if the minor consumptions or Consumption itself is the one making the masks, but I suppose we can worry about that later. Or just not at all, I mean if we wipe out all of the minor ones it may not make more. We still don’t really have a way to know how aware of any of this Consumption is. It clearly wants to use them to gain more energy. So, as long as they’re a net gain it’ll probably try and keep them operational.

I really wish this thing had a more obvious goal than just spreading itself. It feels increasingly like we’re just containing it after the fact.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The club, plus Brook, hit up the local con in hopes of stopping more of the minor consumption spirits. Things somehow go both better and worse than expected.

Meeting 14

Looking into the dirt from the masks, I should be able to use it as an anchor for summoning another spirit. Sort of lean on the fact that they’ve already been used for that before. Maybe summoning something to help us track down the minor consumptions. It’s a risky thing, but might be worth a shot.

That’s not the important thing though.

The important thing is that this is the weekend of the con.

Everyone got their tickets. Except Skip, Skip’s gotten in as a volunteer so he can help get the battery for Louis’ new and improved smaller ghost blaster in. Something about photography for the cosplay contest. Which means we don’t get to spend as much time with him after we deal with the minor consumptions that we’re assuming are going to be there. But it also means that he’s gotten us full access to the facility the con is being held at.

Viv’s been giving Brook con etiquette lessons. Matt got super jealous over that, but given the Sailors Neptune and Uranus costumes that Viv bought for them, I think his jealousy might be both accurate and hopeless. She also brought walkie talkies so we wouldn’t all be fighting with our phones if we needed to get in contact.

So we split up early to cover more ground. Viv and Brook, and then me and Matt, and then Louis wondered off to find Skip.

Loads of really nice costumes. Tons of them.

Also some kind of fandomblob spirit? It was covered in old merch, like Original Series Star Trek and Speed Racer. Some of it was sticking out of it like it was absorbing it. It had these tentacle things that it was floating into the crowd, getting people to breath in.

I tried to show it to Matt. Tried. You could’ve seen the color drain from him and he hit the ground like a sack of cabbages. He was fine a couple seconds later and the Eye was fine, but that was super worrying not going to lie. It might have been the spirit, might have been blood sugar or blood pressure, might have been any number of things.

Either way, I’m not just handing the Eye to him again anytime soon.

Even more either way the woman who helped us get him over to the med tent was glorious. She must have been seven foot tall and shredded. And super nice about helping us. And excited to talk about how she made her cool demon gauntlets to get that glowing mist effect. Which was a really nifty bit of engineering with some kind of electronic vaporizer stop smoking aid and back lights.

I’d have liked to have met her without Matt there is the long and short of it.

I’d have also liked to not said whatever I did that tripped her out so much. She found out about us researching the paranormal and got real closed off real fast. Told us she was leaving and warned us off of following her. Part of me hopes that I can apologize to her for whatever it was later in the weekend. I don’t know that she’d appreciate that though.

Back to the minor consumptions.

You know, a nice light topic.

Viv worked herself into some kind of panicked episode about aliens or something. Skip got us into the VIP room, easy. I got the spell set up and performed while Viv slept off her panic and Louis reattached the batteries for the ghost blaster.

Three minor consumptions right in the circle with me. None of them happy to be there.

The fight started as usual, but then Brook did something. She shifted, but not like back at the henge at Pearly Oaks. It was sudden and sharp and cloths rending and she was suddenly way more a horror movie werewolf that anything I ever expected to see. Just this huge shaggy monster, all claws and teeth, and rending one of the spirits as soon as she’d shifted. Even being inflicted with Tuberculosis again didn’t slow her down.

I feel like it’s the sort of thing that I’m not supposed to be able to remember, but I don’t think I’ll be able to forget it either.

She got cleaned up and changed into the Sailor Neptune costume, but she’s going to miss the rest of the con to avoid infecting people herself.

I’ll want to make sure to hit some of the panels she and Viv wanted to see and bring back stories for them. It’s the literal least I could do.

Something that needs considering too, when Brook shifted both Skip and Matt kind of froze up and half passed out. Neither of them really knew what had happened or seemed to remember anything. Taken with the way seeing the fandomblob seems to have made Matt pass out I can’t help wondering how connected the two incidents were.

Things to worry about after the weekend is over though.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Skip poses a theory about where the minor consumptions are coming from.

Meeting 15

How’s that old song go ,“it never rains but it pours”?

The rest of the con went well. Between the two of us Matt and I hit up most of the panels that Viv had mentioned wanting to hit up. I managed to snag some stuff for her and Brook at the Vendor room. Turns out that our friendly neighborhood werewolf’s favorite Pokemon is Clefairy, the moon Pokemon, please congratulate me on not having made just all the jokes about that.

I think Louis and Skip suspected the woman we ran into, Deva, of being involved in the whole Consumption thing. We ultimately all agreed that there wasn’t any point in confronting her, but I’m pretty sure that when Louis slipped away it was to try and track her down.

I still want to know what we said that set her off, but it really isn’t any of my business and I really don’t want to start a fight over it. It feels like the last we’re likely to see of her was when she took second in the cosplay contest.

On to what is my business, at least in theory.

There were three of the little consumptions at the con, right? We dealt with them, they’re discorporated and no longer a threat. But how did they get there and why were there so many all of the sudden? This was the most of them we’d run into yet.

What Skip suggested what that there might be some kind of taxi-man planting the little consumptions around the city where they would be able to infect the most people and spread both the disease and the fear best.

Like, the convention center is a great example here, there’s stuff going on there nearly all the time, but the con was the biggest thing that was going to be happening for awhile. The other places regularly have a bunch of people in them, so having a little consumption plopped down there makes sense. Having three placed at the convention center outside of the con feels like overkill. As much as I really don’t like the idea of Consumption having a Renfield, I have to agree with Skip that it makes sense that someone’s moving them around.

Of course, a big part of what this means is that we can’t guarantee that the places we’ve already cleared have stayed cleared. Assuming that this taxi-man is real, assuming because we have evidence that there is one no matter how much I want it to not be true, they could have just dropped more little consumptions back off.

I feel like I’m just cribbing all of what Skip suggested here. He made a lot of good points though.

Skip’s gone through the data he got from the city to see if the convention center has reported a bunch of people getting sick before the con happened. There hadn’t been. There’s our proof for the taxi-man being real. If the little consumptions had already been there, we’d have already seen outbreaks.

He also got the lists of other volunteers, so we might be able to narrow down the taxi-man’s identity that way. We’ll go over all that later. I’ll let you know if we find anything or what kind of plans we start kicking around next time.

Feels like we don’t have too much time left now.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With a new lead in the form of the mysterious Taxi-Man, the club settles in to try and figure out who he is and where they can find him.

Meeting 16

Alright, it’s been longer than I meant to take on this but classes and all. The world, unfortunately, does not stop for supernatural happenings.

Louis had found where it looked like some of the places we’d already cleared were re-infested because more folks were getting sick there. But then he dug a little further in and figured out that it was a second wave of infections based on people who were sick passing it on rather than spirits. So, we’re good on that front, at least for now.

Skip’s been going through just, so much data on all this. I’m sure that I mentioned that he’d talked to the director at the Department of Health, well all the work he’s been doing and, more importantly, sharing with them has landed him with an offer of a paid internship with the department. I’m pretty sure that he’s going to accept the offer, I mean he asked Louis and I our thoughts on it and seemed to react pretty positively to that. Either way, I grabbed cupcakes to celebrate.

Less happily, we’re still trying to figure out how to find the Taxi-Man.

Which means trying to find a common person in all the data we’d collected, possibly someone in the other side of the occult club, possibly someone that would have met Consumption after it had possessed Viv or otherwise been brought on board after that.

I admit, I’m having a hard time thinking of something that I wouldn’t trade to know the Taxi-Man’s motive here. Not only would it help us narrow down who it is, but I just can’t wrap my head around what could convince someone to work with something like Consumption. What kind of person would you have to be to let as many people get sick like this, to cause it even if not directly?

On somewhat more productive things, Louis floated the idea of trying to set up a new event that would bait them out so we could catch them in the act. But I think we’re going to have to put that way way on the back burner, it would require a lot more work and resources than we have. Just something to try and find them even if we don’t have their identity.

As to me, I think I might have some idea of what’s going on with the dust from the little consumptions’ masks. Going over it with Brook, it looks like something’s been done to render it invisible but it definitely is from this world and it has never been to the other side of the veil. Which means that the Taxi-Man has to have collected it, which means that I should be able to work out some kind of post cognition spell with it given enough time. Working on a spell to see the past to track down our mysterious new antagonist feels like I should be making a bad joke, but if it works then it’s another option to try instead of the bait event idea.

The masks themselves look more than a little like the ones that sometimes pop up at the BB&C. Knowing more about the tradition behind the masks might be a more mundane clue to just who this guy is. I’ve gone ahead and called them, talked to Sophie, I should hear back from the rootworker who makes the masks they keep there in a few days. If I don’t though could you guys go up and remind them about it? If they forget then it might be easier to have someone remind them in person, plus I know you like their Wicked mocha things so, you know, built in excuse there.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A break in the case leads the party to an old sanitarium in the mountains. What could the Taxi-Man's reasons for working with Consumption be?

Meeting 17

Hoping you guy’s enjoyed the trip to pick up coffee drinks.

I did hear back from the rootworker about the masks, they said they were for ancestor work and that they came from folk magic. No specifications on which folk, but I might be able to dig up more just based on that. What this suggests is that the Taxi-Man might be working with dead people in addition to Consumption. Any kind of ancestor work or necromancy isn’t realy something that I’ve studied before, but it is a cool thing to have found out about the masks and it suggests some things about the Taxi-Man, where he might be coming from magically, and maybe how it works.

We did get a lead from the postcognition thing. I wasn’t able to work up a spell for it over the course of a week, but we found an alternative method and believe me, seriously, believe me, I want to tell you guys all about it but I promised that I wouldn’t tell anyone.

So, just for now, you’re going to have to count as regular people and not get all the details.

Point is, we have a lead.

There’s this old sanitarium from back during the original rounds of Tuberculosis, out east in the mountains. From what we found, he’s apparently been digging up the graves for grave dirt or something. It makes me wonder if he’s made a mistake about what grave dirt is or if there’s another reason for it. I assume a mistake, but, that feels like it might be giving this guy too little credit. He also apparently did not look like anyone from the club, so that’s mixed news. I mean, good that it isn’t anyone that we might have known, but also that leaves it a little harder to narrow down who he is and Skip didn’t take any pictures back when we tried the exorcism. So we can’t really compare there.

I should probably bring up a suggestion Skip brought up, in light of all this new information, what if the Taxi-Man was the one to summon Consumption instead of just being a minion or whatever? I mean, the question still stands of what he gets from all this. We’ve looked at the idea that it might have been something like he was working for Consumption in exchange for magical secrets or monetary gain if he had invested in someplace that makes vaccines, which could still be the case if he was the one who summoned it. That doesn’t really feel good as an explanation for why someone would start a plague like this.

I want this guy to be a minion, I can admit that, I want him to be some poor mislead pawn that Consumption is using kind of like how it used Viv. Because if he’s just a pawn then maybe he isn’t being a bad guy here. Maybe he’s just following the instructions of what he thinks is one of his ancestors and wants to believe that he’s helping contain all this.

It feels naive even to type that.

The sanitarium itself is our best lead right now regardless of what the Taxi-Man’s motive is. With any luck, he’s left some kind of evidence that he’s been there. Maybe like remains of a ritual or something. Matt’s found a probable location for us to check out, turns out that while there’s several of them having a general direction helps out a lot.

Viv texted Brook, so we’ll have her with us in case we run into anything spirit-y that we couldn’t handle on our own. We’re planning on heading out tomorrow morning. If we find anything, like a stack of papers labeled “how I did it and why” I’ll let you know.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The club manages to find their way to the old sanitarium and the horrors within. What is a monster before it is a monster?

Meeting 18

We didn’t find that stack of papers I’d hoped for.

Words, right, words.

We got to the sanitarium. There were some fresh tire tracks, suggested that the Taxi-Man comes here regularly.

There were a ton of spirits around that looked like they’d been infected something awful or twisted horribly. Maybe the effect of all the suffering that happened here back in the day? Something the Taxi-Man did to them? It was like the sickness had sunk into the world itself and started rotting things from within. Nothing started towards us while we poked around outside, just watched from what felt like an eternity of broken windows. Weird thing, one wing had bars on all the windows. The spirits there were worse, not twisted or sick looking, but like they were made of suffering. All eyes and mouths open in horror movie wide screams. Like suffering stuffed into suffering into suffering. Skip said that wing was newer than the rest, something about the architecture I guess.

We found the grave yard from the postcognition, no spirits there.

Taxi-Man had been collecting both grave dirt from cleaning the tombstones as well as just digging up the “Unnamed Victims” field for clay. Robbing them in death for his own benefit. It’s weird to think of. He’d been meticulous cleaning the grave stones themselves, something that would usually be an act of service and remembrance, but then was just digging material out of the paupers’ field.

We didn’t have to go into the newer wing.

That’s something at least.

There was this spirit inside though, a bear. It had been twisted and infected like the other nature spirits. I tried to talk it down, keep it from fighting us, it said that it had to protect its cubs and its den and I could hardly talk to it before something I said set it off and it charged us.

I don’t know what the Taxi-Man had done to it. I don’t particularly want to know. Whatever it was before he got a hold of it, by the time we met it it had been made into a monster. There were ulcers all over it and big places where it was missing fur and it had extra heads where its front paws should have been, all oozing and covered in boils. When it started attacking people, when it hit Viv and Louis, they both broke out in the same kind of boils. Attacking it released a stench like rotting meat.

My memory gets a little fuzzy after that. It hit me, felt worse than when Consumption punched me in the head. I think Matt and his idiot idea to bring a gun he didn’t know how to use without warning any one might have saved our lives. I’m pretty sure I was spitting blood though, so maybe I shouldn’t complain too much.

All that was left of the spirit after the fight was this oily stain on the floor. Like the bear had wondered in and just died and decomposed. And there was us, a bunch of torn up college students, patching ourselves back up and hoping that worse wasn’t further in. And bear cub totems in a summoning workshop that it’d been bound to guard.

We had a little time to poke around the summoning workshop. I took notes on all of it, though I don’t know how useful any of it would be. I’m not even sure how long it took me to take the notes or how accurate they were. More importantly, I found what I think was the Taxi-Man’s ritual dagger. It would make sense if it was anyway, it had the same sort of strange runes on it that the summoning circle and the cub totems and the stuff in his car had on them. It looked like it was made of one of those antique brass and glass needle and syringes, so it might work as a ban against Consumption.

I really, really, don’t think I’m up for talking about this next part yet. It’s selfish, but I really don’t want you guys to judge me for what happened next and I need to convince myself that it was the right thing to have happened.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Taxi-Man was chose to attack the club and to warp the bear spirit into a corrupted form as a guard for his lab. But that doesn't make fighting him any easier.

Meeting 18, the rest of it

Please don’t hate me.

Like, it’s manipulative to ask that, and I’m aware of it and I just really need to know that there’s someone I can talk to about this whole thing that isn’t right in the middle of it. I need you guys to let me have something normal to cling to.

So please, please don’t hate me over this.

Part way through figuring out what to do about the Taxi-Man’s summoning workshop we heard a car door shut. Then bells as we were trying to get into hiding, he’d tied them around his ankle to ward off the bear spirit. He knew we were there, was ready for us, had even cut one of the tires on Matt’s car so we couldn’t get away.

I’m not sure how he did it either, some magic bigger or just sufficiently different to what I do, but he collapsed the room we had been in right out from under us or over us or both? It was a lot of structural damage and it could have easily wiped us all out. He also had some kind of time thingy that all but stopped a bullet around him. It sounds like something out of one of those RPs Saul used to be so into, but I think I countered whatever it was. I think it’s my fault he wound up dead.

He’d have killed us if we hadn’t gotten him first. I know that. I know that and I know that whatever he was doing that I countered would have probably hurt one of us really badly. I know. That doesn’t help though.

I mean, discorporating spirits is one thing, it’s still killing something but it’s different. It isn’t looking down the hall at a guy with a gun and knowing that he’s still a person who’s decided to do this.

We still don’t even know why he did all of this.

I don’t think we ever will now. After he’d stopped breathing, Louis had the thought to scan over his body with the laser grid. Whatever the Taxi-Man would have become it would have been huge. Would have been huge, now it’s just soaked into the floor of the sanatorium.

Nothing in his pockets suggested anything, no notes in his car or book of shadows in the workshop. At least, nothing I could read, I collected everything we could get out that had those weird runes on them. Then also the little consumption mask he’d had with him, having one that’s intact should be helpful. It glows, like that mask is so packed with magical power that it literally glows with it. Based on the summoning workshop and the lack of common materials in the portable summoning workshop he had set up in his trunk, the weird runes have to be seriously powerful. Like, all he had aside from the syringe ritual dagger and the totems he had stashed in the trunk or the summoning circle in the sanatorium was some chalk, salt, and plain white candles.

If I can use the surviving bear totem and the ones from Taxi-Man’s car to figure out the runes, it should explain a lot of how he was able to do all this. It should and I did take all that, both to learn and to keep it out of any potential friends of his’ hands, but if I ever get to the point looking for more magical power that it looks like I’m going to become Taxi-Man the sequel promise you’ll do whatever it takes to stop me.

I mean, I shouldn’t just shove that off on you but, I need to know that there’s someone out there that’ll call me on it. Someone who’ll help keep me from slipping into this.

Especially after the others came back to the car with the body. I don’t rightly know what they did with it or his gun or wallet. I don’t know and I don’t want to know and I’m going to spend a really long time afraid of winding up on one of those forensics shows.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Taxi-Man is gone and, with him, Consumption's ability to send out more minor consumptions to gain power without using the Gauntlet. With this knowledge, the club prepares to start closing in on it.

Meeting 19

I don’t have a ton to talk about this time. I’ve spent a lot of the last two weeks recovering from the plague bear’s attack and just trying to process what happened with the Taxi-Man. Adrenalin does a lot for keeping you on your feet, but I must have slept for two or three days after we got back to campus.

I had to email a couple of professors about missing class work from it.

Louis and Matt have been spending a lot of time in the woods for target practice. It would be kind of impossible to take the ghost blaster to a regular range and I guess Matt would rather practice with someone he knows that head to a range.

We’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a way to make the Taxi-Man’s gun more effective against spirits. It seems to just be a mundane weapon so far. Unlike Matt’s pistol it uses bullets rather than shot gun shells, so we can’t really make salt rounds for it. Best we’ve come up with is maybe marking the bullets with the same sigil I came up with for my rings. The problem with that of course being that we would have to find a way to test it, which would either mean attacking a harmless spirit to test it out or going someplace full of dangerous spirits, like the sanitarium, and risk it not working.

I think, as a just in case, Skip’s going to go ahead and mark several. I made him a copy of the sigil anyway.

Oh, there is good news though. The Uratha have figured out where Consumption is hiding out. Apparently with the Taxi-Man gone it has started pulling power from beyond the veil, allowing them to track it. Knowing where it is means that we can move in on it as soon as everyone’s prepared. With that as a thing that we can do now, instead of just cleaning up after it, they’ve also agreed to perform the Shadow Bind Cloak ritual on Viv. The elder mentioned some caveats to that, but said that they would need to be discussed in person. Seems kind of weird, but it might just be details about how it works that Viv would need to know or parts of the ritual they don’t want me trying to dig into.

I’ve explained what I know of how it works to Viv already, that it won’t cut her off from spiritual stuff or block her from the supernatural but that it will make spirits and things disinterested in possessing her after the ritual has been cast. She seems fine with it, so there’s that.

I’ve also done some digging, since hearing from the Uratha, into what kind of protective gear hospitals used back during the first round of tuberculosis breakouts. I figure that maybe if we had gear like they used then maybe it would give us a benefit against Consumption’s plague blast thing. Everyone’s chipped in on it, I was able to get the materials for it and we found some folks who do costuming that were willing to make a bunch of full outfits of it. I’m not sure how well this will work, but it’s worth a shot, right? The Taxi-Man’s ritual dagger might also work as a bane against it, since I’m fairly sure that he used it as part of summoning Consumption.

We’ll be going to see the Uratha soon, so I should have more to tell you about shortly.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With preparations being made, the Uratha agreed to perform a ritual that would allow Viv to help deal with Consumption more safely. Agreed to it, but not without consequences for Viv. Consequences they chose to hide until it was too late.

Meeting 20

As a serious question, how wrong is it that I’m now five drafts in on an anti-werewolf sigil for a new round of rings? I mean, I’m not planning on having it cast just yet. The current issue needs to be dealt with first, but I’m left feeling that the Uratha are dealing a lot more under handed with us than we have been with them and I want to be prepared for if something goes bad.

Which probably calls for some explanation, doesn’t it?

Right, so we went to go talk to the Uratha about Consumption’s location and to get the Shadow Bind Cloak ritual knocked out for Viv. Reasonable stuff. Brook trying stuffed crust pizza for the first time was more than a little adorable. Good times on the way there. Good times when we got there. Werewolves really like pizza it turns out.

Werewolves are also more than willing to withhold a bit of spellwork that would keep one of our group from being able to help with fighting Consumption safely unless she agreed to marry into their pack. To “become family” as they phrased it. Must have been those caveats the elder mentioned last time we talked.

They agreed to let her marry Brook instead of some random Uratha dude, but still.

We’re working with the Uratha. Fighting a threat that’s already killed just so many people alongside them. Something that is very clearly the threat here and the thing we absolutely have to deal with.

We’re working with the Uratha, but how far can we trust them outside of fighting Consumption? We already knew they were secretive and didn’t want us, me I guess, poking around in their rituals or trying to learn more about how spirits work. Now Viv’s been made to marry into their pack because them doing the ritual for the Shadow Bind Cloak without that would anger the spirits they work with? I don’t trust it or like it and it leaves me much more willing to believe that they’ll try something worse later.

Viv and Brook are going to wind up with their own pack, which apparently means some degree of autonomy away from the main pack. But that’s only after they’ve spent some years with Viv learning the Uratha’s rituals. Also presumably having kids? The Uratha apparently think Viv’s got a strong bloodline or something and want it added into their own. Not going to lie, that bit still being included bothers me on a number of levels.

She seems happy though.

I can’t help but keep circling back around to how badly this could go. But Viv seems happy with how things have turned out so far. The ritual went through, she’s protected from being possessed again. She’ll be helping with the ritual work to banish Consumption. And, as much as anything, she’s winding up with Brook without much drama.


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No turning back. The club and their Uratha allies approach Consumption's current hideout, ready as they can be for the final confrontation.

Meeting 21

We have discovered what it takes to get me into a skirt. Turns out, all it takes is a horrifying disease spirit trying to devour the city I am living in and infect all the people in the surrounding area. Nothing major.

The theater kid Skip had gotten in touch with came through on the gear that’s meant to match the stuff from the old pandemic. They did a good job.

This one is going to be short. Not feeling great and typing this out on my phone is not exactly easy.

Will see how far I can get.

The Uratha tracked Consumption to a building in old town, a storage building or something back when. Skip said they used to use it to access the sewers for upkeep before the manholes could be installed safely.

Magic everywhere in it now.

We did not use the sewers to get in. Figured that if Consumption had trapped the front way in it might have also left something bad in the sewers. Also sewers are gross.

The main building was mostly empty. Creepy, but no immediate monsters, just this pyramid near the back. Right before the way down.

Pyramid had this crystal cap at the top. Like quartz or similar. Lot of the weird writing on it like the ritual dagger and the cub totems. Clearly the Taxi Mans work.

Could not figure out what it was but when I tried to dispel it there was this bright flash of light and it exploded back. Brick shattering wrecking ball exploded back. Cool.

Then there was this big commotion down the stairs a little way further in. We braced for an attack. Waited for it. But it never came.

Eventually the sounds started dying down and the Uratha checked it out. Lot of dead people. Claimed. They said. Like Viv was but at the not reversible stage. They were all stretched out and twisted. Their mouths were the worst. Too big for a human face. Too big for their jaws.

Like a nightmare of hunger.

There was also another one of those corrupted animal spirits. Skip figured that dispelling the pyramid must have released the Taxi Mans hold on it. Matt figured that the pyramid probably was supposed to summon it to the front room on being passed and I let us avoid that.

We let the Claimed and the spirit fight. The Uratha picked off the remaining Claimed after the spirit was beaten.

This is really killing my thumbs and it cannot have been comfortable to read. Never have been good at long texts. Going to see if I can have my computer brought over and write the rest more clearly.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final battle, a bunch of college kids and some werewolves versus the very spirit of Tuberculosis.

Meeting 22

Alright, I have my computer back. It took a little convincing but they eventually allowed someone to pick it up and deliver it to the hospital and then the nurse brought it to me.

I’m still in the isolation room they first put me in. After all the times our little club had someone come down with tuberculosis the hospital staff threw us all into isolation to make sure that we couldn’t infect anyone else with whatever clearly extra strength strain of it we had stumbled across. Not that I can blame the hospital for keeping us like this. “Treatment resistant cases”, they’re calling us. I’ve coughed up enough blood that I’m sure it’ll be a long while until I can get back to the gym or taking the stairs to my dorm or talking for more than about thirty seconds at a time.

If the occult club’s group chat is anything to go by everyone’s been hit with an absolute barrage of tests. Well, everyone except the Uratha. They disappeared as soon as we were safely in sight of the hospital. Skip says he thinks he’s probably met just about all of his future co-workers at this point.

I did say that I would fill in the rest of what happened down there though, and I’m sure that last week’s report was less than riveting for you two.

We started the fight knowing that Consumption had some number of the little consumptions with it, but little more than that. We didn’t know if it had a shield of some sort up or how many of the little consumptions to expect, and we had to expect that, with all the noise that the corrupted spirit made fighting the Claimed, it would be expecting us. But we had the reproduction medical gear, so we figured that it would serve as some form of armor. Enough to give us a fighting chance anyway.

All that taken into account, we decided that it would be a good idea for Skip and Matt to fire an opening salvo, hit it hard and hope that gave it enough pause for me to get in with the Taxi-Man’s ritual knife and hope that it was actually Consumption’s bane. While the three of us were dealing with Consumption itself, Louis was going to focus on taking down the little consumptions. Just keeping them off our backs and taking a weapon away from Consumption itself. Viv was going to use her amulet to ward the area between the Uratha and it. All this to provide a distraction and cover while the Uratha finished their ritual and got it banished as well as, presumably, making the job a little easier by weakening it.

While the Claimed were terrifying and I am decidedly glad that we managed to get around fighting them. I’m not entirely sure that we could have held Consumption off for the single minute finishing the ritual needed, much less beaten it, if we had. I mean, we had salt and a couple acetylene torches for back up weapons, but I don’t know that that would have been nearly enough.

We went on the count of three. Specifically on three, Matt made double, triple, sure that we were all on the same page on that.

Louis shot over the guys’ heads to keep them from being hit as soon as the door was open enough for it, not aiming I don’t think but making sure that they had some space.

I’m not sure that Matt or Skip’s shots did anything.

I’m not really entirely sure of a lot of what went on. I was across the room stabbing it as soon as the door was clear.

The little consumptions tried to stop me. Consumption had to have summoned them itself, they didn’t have the masks the others did. Without them, they were somehow even more terrible, like shrunken heads or something. Like the Claimed with all the humanity removed.

I got through them though. Consumption shrieked as the ritual knife hit it and started twitching, writhing like all of it was trying to avoid the blade at once.

Somehow, somehow, the first round of attacks from the little consumptions managed to miss. I’m told they didn’t hit any of us to start. And the Uratha were able to move in and set up safely.

Our luck with not getting hit didn’t last though. While the others managed to take out several of the little consumptions they also managed to hit all of us except Viv. Instant tuberculosis hurts. A lot.

Enough that I couldn’t manage to hit Consumption again, giving it time to sing more of the little consumptions across the veil. Enough to let everything get worse when they managed to hit some of the Uratha while Viv’s ward was down so she could try to help us.

Skip apparently tried charging the one that attacked them with one of the torches. He managed to not set the Uratha on fire. Viv said it was ridiculous looking. Louis agreed.

I remember hitting Consumption again and spitting blood and threats at it. Brook showed up all Ginger Snaps at some point and dug into it with her claws. I’m pretty sure that Louis shot it again. Either way, it went real still for a moment.

Real still. Like the moment before something awful happens.

Then it was like time moved forward again and Louis was shouting something and the ghost blaster was hitting it like lightning on dry grass and Brook’s claws were tearing it away and it was almost like the ritual knife moved on its own. Like the words came of their own volition.

I dug the Taxi-Man’s ritual knife into it, deeper than should have been possible for something only semi-corporeal, and ordered it to stay still.

No way of telling if the order had any effect. The Uratha finished their ritual almost immediately after that final attack. There was a blast of power and it was hauled back into the veil, spattered essence and all, and the veil sealed itself behind it.

I’m sure there will be more later but, for now, Consumption is dealt with and we all made it. I think I’ve earned the chance to rest. At least until I’m out of the hospital.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the threat of Consumption dealt with and the city on the mend, the club's members make plans for the future and try to settle back in to something like normal.

Meeting 24

It’s been a few weeks, I know, I know. Recovering from magically induced advanced tuberculosis isn’t really easy on the body and, to be entirely fair, not much of note has happened.

I mean, Matt’s been off the group chat a lot. Apparently he’s been trying to use science to explain how all of this happened, again. From what Viv’s said, it’s hitting him pretty hard that he still can’t quantify any of this. She’s hoping that eventually he’ll realize that it doesn’t work that way and just let it be, but he apparently falls into phases like this any time something sufficiently unexplainable popped up. He apparently did this with Santa back when they were kids.

Of course, it could also partly be because his childhood best friend is getting hitched and he never even realized she was dating. It would be rough even if it is someone who makes her as happy as Brook seems to.

Not that she’s been able to hang out much lately either. With the Consumption issue taken care of and Viv scrambling to pull together enough course credits for a degree, Brook went ahead and found a job with a local construction company. She says that the money is good and that the funds mean that they can start saving towards this bit of land that’s got a spiritual nexus on it. Viv’s hoping that the business classes she took will be enough that they can turn that into a new camp ground and give the Uratha a new place to hide out. It looks like Pearly Oaks is shut down for good, so they’ll need a new place eventually.

Louis and Skip have been patrolling the city pretty regularly, no telling when the next big threat will pop up. I’ll be going with them as soon as I can keep up again. It looks like they’re trying to lay the ground work for something bigger than just the university’s occult club, like a city wide network of people who are interested or have experienced things like what we went through with Consumption and want to be able to protect themselves. It’s kind of a cool idea, not going to lie, imagine if the Birmingham Spiritualists could manage something like that.

Of course, they also have their own stuff going on. I think Skip is juggling as many classes as I am at this point and then the club and student government and his internship and about a dozen other things as well as continuing to work with the Uratha as he can.

Louis has been talking about a lot of new equipment he wants to try building and improvements to the stuff he’s already built. He also has said some stuff about looking into magic and how it works, how to perform it. I’ll be interested in seeing what he learns and what angles he takes on ritual. He’ll probably have a different approach to it.

It feels like I’ve missed so much over the last few weeks. Both with the club and in general.

Most of my class work has been delayed, though some of it was online and I could muddle through well enough. Still picking at that weird moving language. I think I’m going to expand into a full double major for the linguistics, it can’t hurt my chances of figuring something out. If nothing else, it could make for a good joke.

I think, assuming something new doesn’t come up or the avarice spirit doesn’t come back to haunt us, this should be the last time I have anything to report for awhile. I think I’ve had just about enough of interesting times for the next long while, at least enough of living in them.

So, turning this around on you, tell me about this girl the two of you met, Lena. How quickly are you planning on trying to drag her into ghost hunting?


End file.
